


Reason and Intuition

by xel



Series: Feather Fall [7]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, One-shot collection ... part 2!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:34:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 8,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22237933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xel/pseuds/xel
Summary: Chapter 1 - Angela and Fareeha play house while undercover. Dinner with the neighbors is an interesting affair.
Relationships: Fareeha "Pharah" Amari/Angela "Mercy" Ziegler
Series: Feather Fall [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1524281
Comments: 67
Kudos: 195





	1. Fake Marriage AU

**Author's Note:**

> Happy new year, 2020! Here’s a bunch of pharmercy one-shots. If you want more, and haven’t read them already, I have 50 more you can read in my work, Contrary to Reason.

“I need you to hold it together, Fareeha,” mutters Angela as they stand shoulder to shoulder chopping fruit in the kitchen. She’s radiating warmth where they touch.

“Where are the lovebirds~?” Hollers Helen Goodhill from the living room.

“Just a moment,” Fareeha calls back, and then looks at Angela pointedly, passing her a serving platter on which to place the fruits. “I’m an awful liar.” she says, quieter. “The operation was fine when you were the one exchanging niceties, but I doubt I’ll be as convincing for an entire evening of this,” Fareeha moves her hand back and forth between the two of them in a small, frantic motion, “-us,” she says and there’s an undefined lift in her voice with the word.

Suburbia has never been Fareeha’s particular brand. Cookie-cutter houses, vague pleasantries to neighbors in the morning, and settling down for a quiet life are all the staples of a more well-adjusted populace. Content people. Established people. 

It is hard to imagine being part of such an environment when Fareeha’s entire life up to this point has been bathed in the iron-hot glow of righteous fury, the daughter of military parents, espionage, and bending international sanctions. Moving, and moving, and moving, and always moving.

Who can possibly settle into modernity after having been tempered in the pressurized bubble of global corruption and injustice? (She’s fought an AI so indescribably dangerous the world called it a god; she doubts Helen Goodhill can claim as much.)

Being married to Angela is already a lot to think about on any given day. When Angela holds her hand, rubs her thumb in small circles over Fareeha’s skin as they talk to Sue Ellen and Joe in the front yard, things get ... complicated. And not. It is easy to say to everyone with conviction that fake marriage is a cover and in that way, is meaningless, but Fareeha finds she cannot fool herself as easily. Playing this role only reminds Fareeha of how desperately she has wanted to love and Angela and every reason she has given herself before not to allow that.

“Let me do most of the talking,” Angela says placidly, stilling Fareeha’s hand with one of her own. It is warm, soft. Angela has a nightly routine of moisturizing Fareeha now knows about, so it shouldn’t be surprising. And yet every time Angela touches her, it is. “The snow will stop before it gets too late and then we can politely, but firmly, boot our house guests out.”

“Alright, ” says Fareeha, feeling a little calmer. “I’m sorry. Winston should have assigned someone more suited to undercover work to be here with you.” 

This assignment had come out of left field for Fareeha who, up to the point where Winston request her, had been placed on shop duty with Brigitte Lindholm. It was an appropriate station while the two worked to replicate the Raptora model. Fareeha could stand to leave Helix after their last tragedy of a mission, but it would be 1) a bit far to assume they would give her a Raptora in parting, even if she was an integral component in its construction, and 2) against the very fabric of Fareeha’s being to steal one. Come to think of it, it was perhaps because of her limited field work that Winston had asked her to participate in an undercover assignment. 

Simple intel. Move into a suburban neighborhood and pose as the loving wife of Margaret Müller-Mustafa, Yosra Müller-Mustafa. The Müller-Mustafa’s. (Fareeha imagines if she were to ever actually marry, to save them both time it might just be easier to not change their names.) 

Angela is the one responsible for doing most of the work. As a lab tech at a pharmacy believed to be supplying a Talon operation, she’s been entirely responsible for infiltration. (Nasty business; Winston’s intel noted that the drugs being delivered were being used for cognitive manipulation.)

_“I’m a trophy wife?”_ _Fareeha had laughed, reviewing her cover file. Angela had given her a coy look in response, laughing softly: “well you certainly have the physique for it.”_

Angela smiles.

“I requested you,” she says simply. 

Angela takes the plate and flashes Fareeha one last reassuring smile before rounding the corner out of the kitchen back into the dining room of their shared home. Fareeha’s heart leaps briefly into her throat at the revelation but she doesn’t have the time to reflect on it like she wants as she follows the other woman. 

“Ah there they are!” Says Helen, she claps her hands together in a very over dramatic gesture. Fareeha is not keen on this woman or her husband, John, who is looking disinterestedly out the window with mild contempt. (Given the picturesque scene of fat flakes of snow falling over a lamp-lit street out there, his expression seems ill fitting.)

Helen talks overly much about all of the neighborhood, is critical of any non-uniform lawn decorations, and seems generally incapable of speaking positively about anything. Fareeha finds her exhausting. John doesn’t speak much but he watches Fareeha and Angela with a wariness indicative of his opinion on their perceived relationship and Fareeha thinks, under his gaze, she has more of an idea than she ever thought she would of what the youth of the 2020s and before might have felt. 

“Thought you might have slipped back there and left us out here worrying and waiting,” says Helen. Fareeha’s also not thrilled with the light guilt trips Helen loves to take her audiences on. 

“I’m sure you managed without us.” Fareeha says, her tone is perhaps a bit sharper than she intends. Angela’s eyes flicker to her in disapproval. 

“We were just having a little moment,” Angela says with a pacifying smile and puts her hand in Fareeha’s for emphasis.

“Well, I guess we can let that slide then, can’t we John?” Helen smiles a little too wide. John’s eyes flicker to their hands and then to their faces. 

“Of course,” he says. 

Angela kisses the back of Fareeha’s hand, squeezes it once in warning and then drops it. 

“It’s such a shame that the weather is so bad,” says Helen, “and after it took so much planning and scheduling to find a day where you could have us over at all.” Angela gives her strength because Fareeha could not do this without her. The truth of the matter is that both Angela and Fareeha has been trying to avoid this evening get together. Helen is many, many things, and topping that list is persistent. “But oh, we are so glad you could have us! We’ve just been dying to get to know you better. You’re both so ... cultured! And your house is so … so unique!” Fareeha follows Helen’s eye to a nude portrait of a woman stretching which is hanging in the foyer.

It’s going to be a very long evening. 

* * *

Helen and John leave at eleven and only after some impressive wordplay by Angela. 

Helen had not-so-subtly hinted that it was late, the weather was still not _just_ right to walk the ten feet to their house, and “oh don’t y’all have a guest bedroom? We could have a good old fashion sleepover - like back in college!” 

Fareeha has been sleeping in the guest room. Angela doesn’t say this, but she does mention that the room isn’t yet fit for guests, because they’ve only recently moved in, and persuade the couple to leave. 

Fareeha lets out a huge sigh as the door clicks shut. 

“Never has an evening of conversation left me physically tired,” Fareeha says flatley. Angela laughs.

“Yes, well Helen Goodhill certainly is the pushy sort of flirt, isn’t she?”

Fareeha blinks.

“What?” She says. Angela turns to face the other woman and her eyebrows furrow comically.

“Did… did you really not notice?” Says Angela, and laughs: “She was flirting with you. Quite obviously, too.” Angela smiles, laying a hand on Fareeha’s bicep and looking at her with a faux pout. “As your wife, I found it distasteful.” 

Fareeha laughs in astonishment at apparently having missed this whole other side to her evening, and then a little at Angela’s joke. Angela’s hand feels nice against her skin.

“Are you jealous?” Fareeha grins. Angela’s pout turns into a clever smile when she responds:

“Yes.” 

Fareeha’s breath stops in her lungs, this feels like a precipice. Angela’s hand feels like fire against her skin. 

Fareeha wishes she could discern what, if any of this, is real. Fareeha cannot make sense of what might be real and what she wants to be real and she wishes, not for the first time, that this wasn’t Angela.


	2. Song Bird

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fareeha sings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really liked this one. I was pretty proud of it. :) Still am.

Fareeha can’t sing but she does, sometimes. When she’s cleaning or alone; when a song she’s heard a hundred times comes on, even when she doesn’t like it - even when she doesn’t quite know the words. 

When Angela first met Fareeha they were so far removed from one another so as to be little more than accessories of the environment. Just another person passing through the background. 

When Angela met Fareeha again, years later, having forgotten and then relearned her name, she was much more present, but less in the way a friend is and more in the way a stranger in a room full of familiar faces is. She was calm, and distant, and quiet and this gave Angela the opportunity to inflict a personality onto her based on nothing but speculation. 

She was aloof. Pragmatic. Ruthless. She had a reputation as a good - great even - tactician but not an approachable one. 

Learning Fareeha had been like learning the streets of a new city. Where once the mental image of her was one familiar street which could be relied upon as an indication of the whole, the back roads and points of interests were a slow revelation, providing a more complete picture than that first street could ever have given. 

For a very long time Fareeha did not sing. 

And then one evening, as by chance Angela was passing the woman’s room, she learned that Fareeha did. Had, perhaps, all along. 

An interesting lamp down a road she’d never bothered to drive before.

“I love you,” says Angela, and Fareeha stops her mumbled song and the dish she is scrubbing. It’s the first time Angela has said it. It’s the first time either of them has. 

“That’s sudden,” Fareeha responds, a grin blooming across her beautiful face.

“Is it?” says Angela, smiling faintly, “I don’t think so.”


	3. (AU) Plot Bunnies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not a chapter but a bunch of AUs and plot bunnies, some of which I’ve used, most of which I haven’t.

Those happenstance paths-crossing flukes of the universe that married couples find out about after they’ve been married, but its Fareeha and Angela after they started dating.

That photograph at the Overwatch base? Fareeha and Angela didn’t know one another, like at all. Fareeha was visiting from Canada, where she lived with her dad, Angela was visiting from Switzerland. It was literally the first and last time they met and neither of them made an impact on the other; the picture was taken for each of them with like, no recollection of the other.

One day way later, after they’ve actually met (probably neither having joined the recall, or only one having joined), gotten to know one another and started dating, Angela is going through her photos and brings out the old Overwatch ones. Fareeha points at it, confused, and goes “that’s ... me. I remember this day.”

And Angela’s just real silent for a very long time and then: “you were that girl... Ana’s daughter...”

Angela was always distantly aware of who Ana was and that she had a daughter who lived in Canada but absolutely did not connect the dots between her and Fareeha.

Being a bit younger, Fareeha didn’t know who Angela was nor did she remember their brief interaction.

* * *

A random couple invites Pharah to their wedding as a joke. She’s a popular hero and a bit of a celebrity and the couple-to-be was probably like “let’s do it, just for fun”

Fareeha gets the invitiation, is a bit confused by it. She looks up the couple’s wedding site and their gift list and decides to herself “I am absolutely going to these strangers’ wedding”

She RSVPs for two, leaving her name off. (The couple thinks one of their guests just missed completing all the blanks.)

Wanting to go, but definitely not alone, Fareeha asks Angela to accompany her to the wedding. Angela agrees immediately.

When they walk into the venue the day-of one bride bursts into tears, the other starts laughing. 

Angela comments that the reception is amazing. 

* * *

Fareeha’s got some truly amazing ear piercings. Half of them are the result of rebellious teen years, but the rest are just because she really enjoys ear piercings. For the most part, because of her job, she chooses a few to put in during special occasions, but otherwise does not wear earrings anymore. 

For one formal event, Fareeha wears the familiar studs, but then puts so many different rings in her right ear it almost looks like a gold cuff. 

Angela spends the entire evening mesmerized.

* * *

Fareeha canonically ice fishes right? So imagine, Fareeha sneaking off on weekends to do regular-fishing in the pond behind the safe house she and a couple of other agents are stationed at. Hana, curious about where she’s sneaking off to and thinking it will be fun, trails her and once she figures it out is like???? “This is boring???”

Later, Angela’s asking if anyone has seen Fareeha, and Hana offhanded, chilling on the couch, is just: “she’s out at the pond in the woods behind the house” 

When Angela finally finds Fareeha, she’s sitting up against a tree, asleep, with a fishing pole set up next to her. And it’s kind of adorable. 

* * *

Fareeha’s got a bit of a hard time hearing on account of wielding a rocket launcher and years of poor protective gear. As a result, when her inahbitions are low she tends to talk a bit louder, but also, she’s gotten very good at reading lips in order to fill in the gaps of conversations she missed.

She finds out that Angela is interested in her when she looks through the glass wall to the medbay and sees Angela talking on the phone and is able to parse together what she’s said through lip movement: 

“I can see her now, she’s just arrived for her check up ——— why not let me decided when best to ask her out ———I am trying very hard not to mess up —— shut up, Lena.”

Fareeha doesn’t actually fill Angela in on this secret talent until, much, much later.

* * *

Fareeha picks up a pewter coin with nothing on it but a sun one day when she’s out in the markets during a mission. She thinks it’s pretty cool and hangs on to it. 

Angela finds the coin in one of her stolen jackets a couple weeks later and refuses to give it back. 

When Fareeha gets a minor injury a month or so after that Angela gives it back to her as a kind of “get well” offering...

Which leads to Fareeha giving it to Angela before her next solo mission...

Which leads to Angela giving it back when next Fareeha leaves...

Which leads to a tradition. 

Now, whenever either of them leaves for a trip the other isn’t a part of, the coin is passed to the leaving party before departure. 

Fareeha likes to send it off with a kiss.

Angela likes to withhold it until she has received one.

* * *

Fareeha lives below Angela in their apartment complex. 

Angela, a doctor with bizarre work hours, has insomnia and often wakes up in the middle of the night; when this happens, she occupies herself by doing small chores around the space until she is ready to go back to bed (Dishes, laundry; she’s vaccummed a couple times but has stopped doing that since the person she shares a wall with complained).

Fareeha served in the military before discharging and finding her apartment, but often has night terrors. Waking up to the comforting sound of someone moving around in the unit above her has become a really good way to ground herself in reality after particularly bad ones. 

Two years in, Angela knocks on Fareeha’s door to ask to borrow a couple of eggs. They talk, Fareeha confesses she can hear Angela, and appreciates that fact.

When Fareeha has night terrors moving forward, Angela is either already there, or Fareeha goes up to bother her until they are both able to get back to sleep.

It’s a good system.

* * *

Fareeha’s got reflexes like nobody’s business. The other agents of Overwatch like to every once in awhile toss things to her to see if she can catch them. Tennis balls if she’s out by the court while someone is playing, keys if they’re headed into town. Fareeha’s so good at it, she doesn’t even need to look up. Hana can call out “head up!” Toss a water bottle to her, and Fareeha will catch it without taking her eyes of her book. 

Angela observes this for weeks and weeks with little smiles and wonderment. 

One evening as they’re standing beside one another in the communal restroom finishing brushing their teeth, Angela says “heads up”, softly. 

Fareeha instinctively raises her hand to grab whatever is headed her way and when she does, Angela laces her fingers into Fareeha’s outstretched hand, pulls her down, and kisses her. 

“You’re even good at catching kisses,” She jokes. 

* * *

Cursed Armor Fareeha, who used to be a castle guard. During a seige the castle’s defenses fell and the guards were all cut down. The duke who lived there instructed Fareeha to protect him, as one of the last standing, and having sworn to do just that, she does. Ultimately, she also falls, as do the duke and all of tennants of the castle. In her last moments, Fareeha manages to get in one very good hit on the aggressors’ captain. As he bleeds out he curses her to remain forever trapped in the armor she so righteously adorns. Being that he was apparently a sorcerer, the curse sticks, and Fareeha remains trapped in her armor, even as her body decays and her bones turn to dust.

As the years pass she spends her time wandering the halls, cleaning, and reading, and sparring against trees, and making company of the strays who call the castle home alongside her. 

Below the castle, the village moves on without the duke, and after a couple of generations, nothing remains of him but the stories concerning the haunted castle on the hilltop. 

These are the stories the witch, Angela, begins to hear when she moves to the village under the guise of a traveling doctor. She puts little stock in them (in all her years she has learned that most accounts of the abnormal are just tales - no substance) going about her days and weeks and years, until eventually the village discovers what she is, and despite all she has done for them, they turn on her. 

They run her out of town and into the wilds. Threatening her and cursing her existence. Angela is used to this, and it is sad, sure, but it is also life. She is contemplating where she would like to move onto next as she makes her way up towards the castle for the evening. 

It’s as she’s getting closer, she begins to notice, and is a bit disturbed by, the sheer number of familiar spirits staring at her from out of trees, from holes in the ground, from the sky above her. They seem benevolent and largely disinterested, though they’re there just the same - watching.

And when Angela is greeted at the gates of the ominous, decrepit castle by a suit of armor, held aloft by an iridescent spirit, it all suddenly becomes clear.

“Hello...” says the armor - female and with an accent, and confused. “You shouldn’t be here...”

* * *

Late one night or very early one morning, Angela gets up to make tea and looks out her apartment window. 

In the complex across the street, most lights are off and those that are on illuminate the blinds of closed windows. However, one apartment’s light are on and the blinds are pulled back and Angela can see, and is delighted and perplexed to see, a woman, about her age, in a t-shirt advertising the Egyptian military and black underwear, sweeping ... but also using the broom handle as an approximation of a microphone.

They lock eyes and the woman points at Angela, bobbing her head and imitating singing louder. The woman grins. Angela covers her mouth and the laugh behind it. A few seconds pass before the woman stops, examines her attire (or lack there of), and promptly bolts out of view.

A few weeks later, Angela spots the woman in the local super market and after debating for a moment, decideds to approach her. 

The woman’s name is Fareeha. She divulges this information while looking very ashamed and apologizing repeatedly.

* * *

Angela wakes up before Fareeha, gets ready, puts on her makeup (red lipstick), kisses Fareeha all over the face, and then heads out early to get some work knocked out.

Fareeha wakes up an hour later, goes straight to the mess in a sleepy daze and is only made aware that something amiss when Hana and Lúcio start snickering.

A woman has never changed colors so fast. 

* * *

When they start dating, Fareeha frequently insists on cooking dinner for she and Angela. This usually results in Angela coming to Fareeha’s apartment or vise-versa. 

Almost without fail, Angela sits on the counters sipping wine and talking with Fareeha about whatever comes up while the other chops ingredients, and so on. 

It’s a nice added benefit that when on the counter, Angela is taller that Fareeha and gets the pleasure of tilting her head up when they kiss. 

And also stealing bits of the ingredients as Fareeha prepares them. A particular favorite is cookie dough.

* * *

Here’s a weird shapeshifter AU:

Fareeha is a hawk shapeshifter who leaves home every morning to perch in the bell tower; awaiting the return of her mother from a war between magical beings (a war that never seems to end, it has gone on for two centuries already). Ana has promised to come back, and so Fareeha waits and she watches.

Angela is a human field medic and keeper of the war bell. It is her job to stay by the bell, at the top of the bell tower, day in and day out and keep an eye out for signs of a siege on the town below.

One day it comes. A massive army, too close and very powerful. 

Fareeha, who has spent nearly a year as a hawk sitting at the top of the bell tower with Angela, sees this too, and when Angela rings the bells, Fareeha, who has already begun to fall for the medic, makes up her mind to help defend the woman and the town.

Little do either of them know, the army that threatens them is not what it appears to be, and it may take more than what Angela has and what Fareeha can offer to save the town and its people, from destruction. 

* * *

Fareeha fractures her ankle five miles into a mountain hike. She’s doing it alone; it’s the first time she’s hiked alone since her ex broke up with her three months prior and she’s been a bit reclusive, to be honest, but she needs to do something. 

The trail is to see a waterfall; it’s an easy trail too, but Fareeha had been distracted on a particularly slick gathering of rocks and she’d slipped. Stubborn as she is, she walked the last two miles while the ankle swelled just to make it to the waterfall. It’s suppose to be gorgious and she’s pretty sure she’s suffered worse.

Problem is: there’s someone there (which is a little surprising, Fareeha hasn’t seen a single person on the trail all morning). 

Angela’s camping near by the waterfall; its a bit of a soul-searching thing but mostly a ‘I need some fresh air and a break from reality’ kind of thing and she’d set off for the weekend to go camping and be alone.

On her second day in, after having not seen anyone at all, a woman on a mission stumbles up the trail and promptly plops onto a rock near the falls. 

They’re both a little startled to see each other and Angela might have been more inclined to start with introductions, but she’s got a doctor’s eyes and the first thing she really notices is the red, puffy, swelling ankle and how the woman grins sheepishly through what is obviously a fair amount of pain.

Angela finds herself chastising the woman (Fareeha) before she even gets her name.

Fareeha ends up spending the night camping with her as Angela is absolutely against her hiking back down on an untreated injury. 

Some things happen.

* * *

Angela draws hearts with her pointer finger on Fareeha’s thighs during briefings.

Angela draws hearts on the whiteboard in Fareeha’s dorm when she’s sleeping.

Angela draws hearts in the fog on the mirror after they shower.

Angela contextualizes her love with actions, and affirmation, and Angela draws hearts in the hopes that Fareeha sees them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter is a little different. I don’t know if anyone is really interested in seeing ideas for stories rather than the stories themselves, but here they are anyway. :’) I have more (a lot more) so if this is something you enjoyed let me know and maybe I’ll make another chapter like this sometime down the line! 
> 
> And I mean, it’s a lot to hope for, but if anyone wants to take one of these ideas and run with it, please, by all means, do.


	4. Late Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angela’s working later and Fareeha would really prefer she not.

An unforeseen problem of co-inhabiting a space (is any variety, really: dorm, apartment, house) is the opposing sleep schedules, Fareeha thinks, grumpily, at two in the morning, as the dim light of Angela’s desk lamp casts dull red silhouettes against the shutter of her eyelids. 

In truth, Fareeha is a deep sleeper and it will, and has frequently in the past, taken more than a desk lamp to interrupt her rest— or bother her to any measurable degree. She is born and bred military, after all, and when sleep is as hot a commodity as it is in a barracks situation, you sort of learn to play with the hand you’re dealt.

Also, although the roommate situation had been mandatory given the shortage of bunks during the recall, if Angela’s sleep patterns had truly been the issue, Winston would have gladly assigned her to a room with occupants who better fit her schedule, in order to keep all operatives in good condition. For organizational health, keeping an eye on general wellness up to and including sleep habits is really in the best interest of everyone. 

No, honestly, it’s not an issue that Angela is working late into the night in she and Fareeha’s shared dorm - there have been similar nights where Fareeha hadn’t even noticed that was the case, and there will be more just like it - the issue is that tonight, Fareeha wants to cuddle and her other half is not in the bed to reciprocate. 

“Angela,” she mutters into her pillow. 

“Hmm,” Angela replies. Through bleary eyes, Fareeha can see the doctor bent over her desk, glasses slipping toward the end of her nose, marking something up on the file in front of her. 

“Is it urgent?” Fareeha asks. Angela’s eyes flicker to Fareeha, and a moment later she sets down her pen and gives her bed-ridden girlfriend her full attention. 

“Not ... urgent, no, but important.”

“More important than me?” Fareeha asks. Angela gives a disapproving frown and Fareeha grins guiltily back. Low blow; point taken.

Fareeha holds out an arm, an invitation:

“Come to bed,” she says, “I’m sure whatever you’re working on will still be there in the morning.”

To her credit, Angela contemplates her work for a full minute or so before eventually acquiescing to Fareeha’s request. Fareeha knows the doctor is tired; Angela has been pulling late nights all week. That sort of thing catches up to you, even with augmentations and a series of clandestine and clinically untested pharmaceuticals designed to reduce the need for sleep coursing through your system. 

Also, and Fareeha is fairly certain she is correct in her assumption: Angela likes cuddling with her just as much as Fareeha wants it. 

Angela sighs, slips off her glasses and lays them on the desk, clicks off the desk lap, and feels her way towards Fareeha’s waiting arm.

Fareeha is warm from her recent shower - rinsed free of the sweat and aches of a day of training - and her skin is soft and her breath is shallow with half-sleep.

Angela makes a noise of relaxation as she falls into bed and Fareeha wraps her arms around her waist, grinning into the hollow of her neck. 

“Thank you,” Fareeha breaths, sincere. 

“Hmm,” says Angela. “I believe you owe me something.”

Fareeha kisses Angela’s shoulder, and then her lips when Angela turns to face her in the dark - slow, soft, a small nip, and shared quiet laughter. 

“Happy?” Angela asks.

“More than you can imagine,” Fareeha replies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, I don’t sleep well. I wake up in the middle of the night, sometimes I have trouble getting to sleep in general. I’m only telling you this because when these bouts of not-sleeping get to me I write pharmercy. Specifically: I write Pharmercy at night either going to sleep or being unable to sleep and this is not the first chapter I’ve posted with this subject matter and it will not be the last. I’m sorry ^^;


	5. Bloody knuckles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fareeha’s not handling the news of her mother’s return in a particularly healthy way

Fareeha splits her knuckles on the punching bag and barely misses a shot in the abdomen from a training bot. She overworks herself until she’s bent over and her shins are on fire and when everything outwardly mirrors that which she cannot explain but feels within she picks herself, battered, bruised, and aching, up off the training room floor, takes a deep centering breath and makes the long, quiet trek to the med bay. 

The halls are dark and her footsteps echo in the silence. Fareeha is beginning to hate silence.

When she enters the medbay, Angela takes one look at her from her desk and goes to retrieve the bandages. 

She tells Fareeha to have a seat in one of the two ill-padded chairs and, sitting across from her, begins the task of wrapping her bleeding hands.

“Is this about Ana?” She asks, her voice soft. She does not look up. Fareeha is grateful. 

“She’s alive,” Fareeha says, absently. Fareeha looks past the doctor, to the window where it is dark and nothing is visible but her reflection and in her reflection, she sees her mother, a woman she thought dead who isn’t. What can she say. 

“How are you taking that news?” 

“I don’t know,” Fareeha responds. She could say not well, but Angela is wrapping her hands and having this conversation so likely knows that much.

Fareeha’s eyes flicker to their hands, anywhere but the doctor’s face, and she is holding them so carefully.

“Stay with me tonight,” says Angela. Tucking the end of the bandage and securing the wrap. She brings a hand to Fareeha’s cheek and it takes everything in Fareeha not to choke on the tender way she says: “Please.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Felt sort of meh about this when I first wrote it, but while rereading to post, I suppose I like it a bit more. 
> 
> One of these days I really want to write a longer story about Fareeha and Ana reconciling Ana’s death but I’m not actually sure anyone would find it anything other than depressing if I was the one doing it. ^^;


	6. How to be Alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fareeha gives Angela the key to her room.

Fareeha’s nearly asleep when the door creaks open.

It’s Angela, because Angela is the only other person with a key, but Fareeha is still surprised. Angela had taken the key because Fareeha had refused to give it to anyone else.

“ _You can take it_ ,” Fareeha had said, “ _or I can hold on to it. But I will not be giving it to anyone else._ ”

Angela is a bit paranoid at heart, Fareeha knows, and she feels a little bad for having exploited Angela’s fears - the fear that if the time came, if Fareeha did not answer her phone, did not show up for training, no one would have the means to check in on her - but then, Fareeha can’t think of any locked-door situation where she wouldn’t want Angela there first and foremost. 

That had been months ago. 

“Fareeha?” Angela whispers.

Fareeha hums.

“I thought about what you said,” Angela says, her footsteps are light as she approaches. Fareeha can make out only her fading silhouette against the barely-there light filtering in under the entry door. “And I’d like to take you up... on your offer.”

Fareeha grins though she knows Angela cannot see it, and lifts the duvet so the other woman can slip under it.

“What made you change your mind?” Fareeha asks, not unkind as Angela presses against her. 

“I’m tired of being alone,” Angela says. Fareeha can feel her breath on the nape of her neck as she speaks.

When she wraps her arms around Angela, the other woman surprises them both by moving closer.


	7. And the Thunder Rolls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fareeha talks to Angela about her first mission post-recall.

It rains the night Fareeha gets back from Croatia. The contrast between the sunny skies and clear, blue water off the coast of Split and the rolling thunder and cords of lightning which illuminate the ash-gray clouds settled like a heavy blanket over the Swiss Alps is jarring. 

Fareeha listens to the muffled taps of droplets hitting her window as she lays in bed, looking out into the blackness of the room, knowing that even in the light there is nothing worth seeing - a standard-issue dresser, a bed-side table void of knickknacks. She hadn’t had time even to unpack into her dorm before she was assigned her first mission and now that she’s back, she reasons now might be the time. 

But she’s tired. Not sleepy per say, but she’s mentally unprepared - for the life change; the implications of joining Overwatch.

If it hadn’t been Angela who asked that she come, Fareeha likely wouldn’t have; even being here she wonders if she ought to have said no and held right to the path she’d paved for herself.

A boom of thunder shakes the room and Fareeha counts seconds as she waits for the flash of light to rip across the sky. It strikes on five, so powerful and brilliant that for a brief moment the picture in the window looks like a snapshot of a rainy noon day, and then it is dark again and Fareeha is rolling out of bed.

She finds Angela in her lab. She’s looking into a microscope, her bulky red glasses resting at the top of her head and her usual ponytail low, hair spilling out at the base of her neck and the frame of her face from a day of work and movement. 

Fareeha moves to sit on the countertop beside the microscope, careful to find a place that isn’t being monopolized by paperwork or half-full coffee cups. 

Angela looks up briefly to see what has jostled her work and when she sees Fareeha she smiles the tired smile that is so quintessentially hers and returns to whatever it is she was observing. 

Fareeha’s attention is drawn back to the storm. From the lab, more of it is visible - the whole of the wall shared with the building’s exterior is windows and although it is too dark to see much further out than the few feet not obscured by the interior lighting, Fareeha amuses herself in the quiet intrigue of watching water droplets race down the glass, taking mental bets on which ones she thinks are likely to win. 

For awhile, they sit in silence. Fareeha isn’t opposed to it, a lot of their time is spent in silence - comfortable simply to know the other is there - even before they were together, when their friendship had been maintained exclusively via phone calls and holo videos, this has been their way.

“How was your mission?” Angela eventually asks, she casts Fareeha a quick glance to let her know she is listening while she works but otherwise her attention is not on her. 

“Uneventful,” says Fareeha, “I located the house Winston briefed me on but there was nothing there. It was either looted or ex-Overwatch cleared it after the fall. Either way, of no use to us.”

“Hmm,” Angela hums, clearly picking up on Fareeha’s frustration. “Did you at least visit the beach while you were there?”

Fareeha huffs a laugh through her nostrils and shakes her head in disbelief.

“Maybe next time.”

Angela sits back from her work to properly appraise Fareeha then, she rests an elbow on the counter and puts her chin in the palm of her hand and looks at Fareeha for a very long time, her expression open. The storm outside rumbles in the background. Fareeha holds her eye for a moment but looks away when it becomes too much. She’s not sure what the doctor is looking for, but feels like she should try to conceal it anyway. 

“And how is your time in Overwatch, Fareeha?” Angela asks. “Is it everything you hoped it would be?”

Fareeha thinks Angela is probably mocking her a little because no, it is nothing like she thought it would be back when she would have given anything to join it. She thinks Angela had been banking on that, a little bit. Banking on Fareeha feeling disappointed to some extent. Angela had not been keen on the recall even as she asked Fareeha to join it, and Fareeha thinks she is probably right to assume that Angela wants everyone to be a little critical of everything that happens here so that no repeated mistakes are made. 

Fareeha can’t say she faults her for it exactly. Perhaps Angela had felt confident inviting her because she knew it would not be the thing that Fareeha idealized so long ago. 

“If I tell you the truth will you revel in my disillusioned childhood dreams, Angela?” Fareeha asks, but does not face the doctor.

“No,” says Angela. “I’m sorry this can’t be what you wanted it to be.” She sounds sincere enough. Fareeha rolls her eyes and turns back. 

“No you’re not,” she laughs. Angela’s grin is a small, guilty thing. 

“Well, at the very least, I’m glad you came anyway.” 

“Unfortunately,” says Fareeha, “if you asked, I think I’d just about do anything.” 

“That’s a lot of power you’ve given me.” 

Fareeha sets her hand over Angela’s free one and faces the window again, catching another flash of lightning in the distance. It looks the way her skin feels against Angela’s - vibrantly present, impossible to ignore. It tingles, just a bit. 

“Don’t abuse it, doctor,” says Fareeha. 

Angela searches Fareeha’s profile with a small smile, turns her hand to intertwine their finger and squeezes lightly, and then she returns to the specimen under the microscope, saying no more.


	8. Signs of Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fareeha goes on a mission and Angela find her absence more noticeable that anticipated.

Fareeha is absent from the all-hands in the morning, from the informal training Winston hosts that afternoon, and from dinner. (The quiet chatter of Angela’s colleagues across the various tables seems muted without Fareeha’s airy chuckles.)

Angela sits with her back to the dorm wall she shares with the woman at night and listens for signs of life before bed - the murmur of the rock music Fareeha likes or idle chatter on the television. The noises she has become so familiar with these past six months are absent and Angela lies awake all night uncomfortable with the silence; straining for something. 

“Hana, have you seen captain Amari?” Angela asks the next day, stopping Hana as she sprints past, arms full of candies and drinks. Movie night. It’s movie night. 

Hana turns on her heel, graceful as a dancer and gives her a puzzled look.

“She’s out this week,” says Hana, “she said she was going to be gone until Friday.”

“Did she?”

“Yup, during briefing. You don’t remember?”

“I guess not,” says Angela, sighing, “I’ve been a bit preoccupied.”

“Hmm~” Hana offers, noncommittal, “well, no worries, she’s not gone or anything.”

“Thank you,” says Angela. Hana nods with a grin and runs.

Fareeha’s not gone, but she is absent. 

Angela tries not to think about it, tries not to think about why it bothers her. She’s not especially close with Fareeha Amari. They’re casual acquaintances at best, but each night Angela cannot hear her snoring through the wall, each day they don’t pass each other knowing smirks or fond eye rolls during tedious meetings Angela gets more anxious.

There’s no need for it. (Fareeha isn’t her responsibility, what’s more, Angela’s got no right to her location, her motivations.)

Until there is.

Fareeha comes back Friday evening covered in bandages, cuts, and bruises. 

Angela is coming in from a walk when she meets the woman at the front entrance. Fareeha gives her a tired smile.

“You look like hell,” says Angela, appraising her.

“I feel like hell,” Fareeha laughs, her eyes are so soft, and opens the door for Angela. 

“Do you ... want to talk about it?” Angela asks, hoping she will; knowing she won’t. 

“Nothing to worry about doctor, it’s mostly superficial.” Fareeha grins. She looks so, so tired. Angela hums and doesn’t say that’s not what she meant.

That night, Angela sits up against her wall, hears the music and the snoring and wonders about Fareeha Amari. Wonders about where she was. Wonders who she is. Wonders why she wants to know everything. 

The next morning she wakes up more rested than all the days of the week before 


	9. Signs of Life Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a short continuation of the last chapter for SpartanOli :) 
> 
> When I wrote the last chapter I had originally intended for it to go in this direction but as has probably been made apparent by just how much of my writing is short snippets of thoughts, I don’t have a very long attention span and stopped before I could actually get to any meat. Since I already had an idea of where it was going, though, and given your comment, I thought I’d write up a little of what I was thinking as thanks for reading!

“We should talk about this,” says Angela. And Fareeha is bed ridden so the most she can do is say no, which will not be enough this time.

Angela’s dealt with a lot as the chief medical officer of Overwatch and she knows Widowmaker’s work when she sees it. Two shots: head and heart, it’s always the same. Usually in the back, if she is the one stalking, and those cases Angela is familiar with through autopsy alone. Fareeha was hit in the front; her left ear clipped and straight through her chest - it is a miracle the round did not pierce anything on its way out. More than a miracle really, Fareeha should be dead. 

Angela was not aware Overwatch was tracking Widowmaker, much less intending to confront her. It’s not a risk she would have allowed, had she known. Widowmaker does not miss and she rarely fails. 

“What if we didn’t?” Asks Fareeha. Angela’s not sure if she would prefer that Fareeha treat this as something to joke about, as is her general approach when she returns with injuries, or if there is some silver lining to the fact that she does not. At least, thinks Angela, she recognizes the severity of her situation. 

“I have been very forgiving of your inexplicable injuries in the past, and I recognize that you more than most here have secrets,” says Angela,“but I will not have Overwatch repeat its past mistakes. If you’re working outside of Winston’s oversight you had better tell me now,  _captain_ .” 

Fareeha, who has previously been focused on the ceiling turns her head to watch Angela and Angela shivers. And then she smiles something bitter that looks horribly out of place on the woman who Angela has known to be mostly good natured, if not a bit serious, up until this point.

“I’m not,” says Fareeha, very simply. “This was part of the terms of my recruitment.” 

“What do you mean?” Says Angela, confused and not used to it. 

Angela does not have a lot of opportunity to stare at Fareeha and this is not the ideal situation for it but still she takes advantage. Mostly, though, she doesn’t see anything particularly noteworthy; Fareeha just looks exhausted. 

“When Winston invited me to join I declined,” says Fareeha, forthcoming, at least. “He asked me if there was anything that would change my mind and told me to contact him if so. There was and I did; he has been providing me with intel on Widowmaker and in return, I joined the recall.”

Angela feels confusion turn to anger; at whom she has not yet decided.

“Why?”

“Does it matter to you, doctor?” Fareeha asks. 

Angela wants to say yes, but she cannot say why which she knows will be the inevitable follow up so she says nothing. For a moment too long she says nothing and then: 

“You’ll need to remain here for the next few days so I can monitor you. Get some rest.”

“Okay,” says Fareeha, even though she does not seem very pleased with Angela at the moment, and closes her eyes. Let no one says Fareeha Amari is contrary just for the sake of it. 

Angela leaves the woman in the medbay, alone except for the various hisses and beeps of the machinery attached to her. The doors to the facility close behind her almost silently and Angela cannot help but to glance down at her tablet to confirm Fareeha’s readouts have not changed in the seconds since she stopped directly looking at her. It’s foolish, they haven’t. 

The walk back to her dorm is a quiet affair and Angela’s mind is looping with the information she has learned. She wonders if all of Fareeha’s absences have been a result of this side project; if Winston intended to hide this indefinitely, running off the lunatic assumption that Fareeha would not eventually die as a result. She has never heard of a more absurdly stupid arrangement. 

That night, there is no sound on the other side of her dorm wall. No music, no snoring, nothing. 

And Angela wakes up every half hour like clock work checking her tablet like a worried mother with a baby monitor. 

* * *

At three in the morning Angela finally gives in and walks purposefully to the med bay.

She enters the room to silence. 

Fareeha is asleep. Her face is pinched in the restless sleep of the uncomfortable and, yeah, being near fatally shot will do that to a person, but otherwise everything is alright. 

Angela sits in one of the not-very-plush chairs available to her and despite the angle and lack of padding is finally, finally, able to sleep.


	10. Don’t Panic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fareeha likes to have her panic attacks in private.

It’s quiet because it is always quiet because Fareeha seeks the quiet; seeks the lonely corners of the facility - places people don’t go or have stopped going: conference rooms and storage closets, the hallway furthest from the dorms where none of the lights work. 

Fareeha’s partial deafness is what it is most days, and on days where everything is a bit too much, a cold comfort, but still Overwatch is loud. The way they all talk and move and color the spaces around them, it makes Fareeha nervous, agitated, uneasy. Remnants of a life of caution.

So Fareeha sits in the hanger, her favored spot, as the evening hours tick slowly by and busies her hands with tinkering and waits for the ringing in her ear to fade out. 

Waits for everything to fade softly into the background, to blur seamlessly like dawn into day. Fareeha has been doing a lot of waiting lately.

Waiting for the sun to rise.

Waiting for a new assignment.

Waiting for the anger to pass.

What she’d give for the anger to pass. 

Fareeha’s hands shake around the wrench she is holding and jostle the loose nut she’d been tightening. It clatters to the floor and rolls under a standing toolbox.

Fareeha breaths. Her vision tunnels, her neck burns and her heart beats heavy in her chest. And Fareeha lets it happen, like always, Fareeha’s been here before, lives in this space. 

She sits down on the concrete slab of flooring, letting the wrench slip between her fingers, and lays back, looking up at the steel beam rafters. The ground is cold against her back and the silence, such a comfort, feels omnipresent now that it is her main focus.

Sometimes, she thinks of war, of being shot and shot at. Sometimes, she thinks of loss: of her mother’s death and the instability of her life and circumstance. Sometimes she has a reason, her blood pulsing quick in her veins like a rabbit being chased. 

Sometimes she doesn’t. 

Maybe her panic doesn’t come from any one source, Fareeha thinks, when the images in her peripheries begin to slowly return around the fogged glass tunneling. Maybe it’s everything, years and years of just so much stuff and no time and no room (no inclination) to make sense of it all.

She still feels uncomfortably warm when she turns her head to the side to let her cheek rest against the cool floor. From this position she has a perfect view of her wayward nut, and further away, a pair of black boots entering through the opened garage door.

“So this is where you hide,” says doctor Ziegler, her tone both humored and cordial.

Fareeha cannot decide if she’d prefer the doctor’s company or for her to kindly vacate. She settles for returning her attention skyward and closes her eyes for good measure. 

It seems a lot to concentrate on looking, talking, and breathing all at once, and frankly she’s too tired to try.

“Hiding requires a certain amount of subterfuge,” says Fareeha, “and you’ll notice I left the bay wide open.”

Angela’s boots clack against the concrete as she approaches and stop abruptly shockingly close to Fareeha’s head. Slight vibrations in the ground tell her Angela is sitting beside her now and Fareeha cracks an eye to confirm.

The angle would be unflattering on most anyone else but the doctor has no bad sides and consequently Fareeha has a rather beneficial view of red lips as seen from below and upside down. 

Angela glances down at her and those lips tilt into a wry smile, crinkling the skin around her piercing eyes. 

Fareeha’s heart thumps irregularly for reasons that could either be Angela or her current mental state and there’s really no way of telling short of picking the one that’s least concerning. 

“Then what do I call your scarcity, if not hiding, Ms. Amari? What do I call you missing your onboarding appointment?”

“Missed connections and poor planning respectively,” says Fareeha. 

“Your file lead me to believe you are nothing if not professional.” There’s only light hearted chastising in Angela’s voice so Fareeha surmises she’s in no real trouble. This is a pleasant development since Fareeha’s not really on any terms, good or bad, to speak of with most of the members of Overwatch, and she could use an ally.

It’s a by-product of her recruitment which was much less about anyone’s desire to have her, specifically, and more so about their desire to have Ana, who is, as she had informed them rather unkindly via reply to the recall message, still very much dead. Her offer had been secondary (very awkwardly following the conversation about her mother) and mostly out of necessity for as many bodies as could fight. Lucky Winston that’s all Fareeha knows.

The panic attacks are just a small part of everything that encompasses. The large majority is made up of recklessness. Hence, saying yes to the offer at all.

“I don’t really like doctors,” says Fareeha, feeling a need to defend whatever her file has painted her as. She watches Angela watch her.

“That’s a shame,” says Angela, “I quite like you.”

Despite herself, Fareeha finds she is laughing. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really like this one, so there’s that ^^;


End file.
